Paul Coelho is a successful writer, he did write the Alchemist for example, a book that sold millions of copies. He was recently talking about this book and the distribution of the book in Russia. In its first year the book sold 1000 copies. That is not really much if you consider that Russia has a population way above 100 million. The book was also copied and distributed in Russia on the black market and Paul decided to publish the Russian version of his book on his website.

To his and his management’s astonishment the book sold 10000 copies the next year, 100000 copies the following and over 1 million copies the year after up to over 10 million in 2008. He attributes this success to the free publication of his book on his website because marketing and distribution remained exactly as they have been before.

Link: sevenload.com

Since he discovered that his books sell better when he gives them away for free on the Internet he created his own WordPress blog called Pirate Coelho where he is offering download links for many of his books using various ways like emule and file hosts.

via Techdirt